Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima Photo is More than a Legacy

Joe Rosenthal was a photographer who passed away this week-end at the age of 94. He took one of the most famous photos ever – the US Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. It served as a model for the Marine Corps War Memorial, and it was listed on a New York University survey of the best journalism of the century, ranking 68 out of 100. Joe Rosenthal may or may not have been a great photographer. He did take one almost perfect picture.

Photography as an art form is more democratic than most others. For decades, it has been possible for the average person to take pretty good snapshots of everything from Johnny’s fifth birthday party to the sun rise over Mount Fuji. Where photography becomes a genuine art is in the persistence of the photographer. Getting the picture without posing anything, capturing a moment, showing life without motion are all definitions that come up short. But when one sees an artistically brilliant shot, very few people “don’t get it.”

Mr. Rosenthal almost didn’t take his picture. The shot he took was of 5 Marines and 1 Navy Corpsman raising a second flag on the 546 foot high peak; the first one was deemed too small. So, in a purely factual sense, the picture isn’t what many believe it to be. Nonetheless, anyone who is familiar at all with WWII as fought in the Pacific, with 6,800 US servicemen dead on Iwo Jima and almost all of the 21,000 Japanese defenders dead as well, one cannot say the picture isn’t true. Art, on occasion, trumps facts in revealing truth.

Mr. Rosenthal modestly said, “Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don’t come away saying you got a great shot. You don’t know. Millions of Americans saw this picture five or six days before I did, and when I first heard about it, I had no idea what picture was meant.”

For the rest of his life as a photographer, he was a success, but how does one follow a shot seen round the world? He said he was “a guy who was up in the big leagues for a cup of coffee at one time.” Luck had a lot to do with that picture, but persistence tends to create its own luck. In his 94 years, Mr. Rosenthal probably took tens of thousands of pictures, but that one stands out. Some never even get that. Not bad for a guy who was turned down by the Army as a photographer because his eye sight wasn’t good enough.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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